Transport

Vehicle control is usually handled by manual controls or droid links. Human
beings who get cybernetic links to their vehicles usually develop problems
with dissociation
after a while.

Sith Lords are always looking for more novel tactics in their struggles
for power. Just about any vehicle type has been considered for
military use at some time.

Most scale 2+ vehicles have crash fields that engage in an accident—
they’re similar to the acceleration compensators on a spacecraft. They
operate off ultracapacitor banks that charge off a vehicle’s engines and can
function even if the engine is shot to pieces. They require antigravity
technology. (Cheaper vehicles use force fields for the same purpose, which
work like full-body seatbelts, which provide more uneven deceleration.)

Some vehicles are built for quick replacement; others are built to last.
Military vessels in particular can last a very long time, since they’re built
for durability, and there is a robust market in secondhand ships that aren’t
quite up to the state of the art for someone’s military but will do just fine
in the hands of a mercenary fleet, or as trade escort vessels, or get refitted
for trade or colonization purposes.

Technology

Hydrogen is a very popular fuel; in small vehicles, it can run fuel cells,
and in larger ones, it runs fusion plants.

Security

Alarms will usually produce a powerful distraction to disrupt the
concentration of anyone attempting to break into a vehicle, but their
primary threat is summoning security services via wireless. Many
autopilots are able to use more active defenses; some will simply lock
a person into the vehicle and take them someplace for punishment,
while others will attempt to run people over. Some vehicles are
electrified or equipped with other weapons for dissuading unpleasant
behavior. Naturally, this leads criminals to testing the alarms, and
it’s not surprising to see an accumulation of dead vermin in the
gutter after they’ve been thrown at a succession of parked
speeders to test their defenses.

Ground

Vehicles controlled by the Drive skill.
This includes repulsorlift-based speeders, wheeled and tracked vehicles,
and walkers.

Military and rough-weather vessels have more need of traction than
civilian transports, so they usually have some way to keep in contact
with the ground, such as wheels, treads
(often
made with advanced plastics), or legs; some rely entirely on them,
while others also include repulsorlifts and thrusters for traveling in
good conditions. Some military units use speederbike cavalry.

Speeders

Vehicles that use a repulsorlift force field cushion to push off the
ground; when stationary, they can go no higher than their own width above the
ground. At high enough velocity, many can reconfigure the cushion to become
a ground effect
vehicle, with a maximum altitude of about 10 meters. (In this mode,
Drive skill is complemented by Pilot.)
Repulsorlifts are extremely
efficient devices; they use so little power that people generally leave their
landspeeders powered up for convenience. Maintaining altitude requires very
little energy, so the main cost to repulsorlift craft is overcoming
atmospheric friction.

Using gravity or traction fields for lateral
acceleration, however, is very slow, so most repulsorlift craft have some form
of thruster:

Jet
engines powered by fusing tibanna (using mechanisms similar to those in a
blaster) are used on worlds with common galactic trade.

Stealthy vehicles use a
field thruster, which requires
electrical power to run. Tibanna-powered jet engines have an intrinsic
advantage, as they don’t need fuel cells, big batteries, or power plants
to provide the electricity.

Planets without access to tibanna use energy-rich hydrocarbon fuels
(usually synthesized by tailored bacteria). These thrusters actually need
oxygen to run; the previous two just need some form of atmosphere to use as
propellant.

Hotwiring a repulsorlift ground vehicle for flight is very tricky, since
their traction fields can’t provide stability against the ground and they lack
the gyros of air and spacecraft. They also lack the energy throughput for
rapid ascent. Repulsorlifts ignore terrain modifiers, but have the most
problems with weather; they are also more expensive for many kinds of cargo.

Landspeeders have a difficult time navigating extreme slopes; the force field
cushion has negligible mass, and a landspeeder can simply flip over if it goes
up too steep a slope (particularly if the slope is boulder-strewn and the
speeder needs the ground clearance) and its center of mass goes too far back.
Wheels and treads are more reliable in rugged terrain, particularly in
inclement weather.

Small (size 1) vehicles holding one to two people, holding much the same role
as motorcycles. They are fast and maneuverable, but can carry at most two
people. Quad-bikes are speederbikes with dual sidecars that mount extra
thrusters; they have extra seats but not much cargo capacity. Some military
versions have sidecars with pintle mounts for heavy weapons, with the
sidecars able to rotate to fire backwards.

Podracers are minimalist contraptions that feature two gigantic thrusters
connected to each other by force field binders, connected to a control pod by
physical cables. All three have repulsorlift cushions to get them off the
ground, and the absurd amount of power on the engines can pull the whole
assemblage up to 800kph, roughly ⅔ the speed of sound on most habitable
planets. Podracers are almost never used for anything but podracing; they are
notoriously difficult to control, have a terrible turning radius, and the
flexible configuration makes weapon mounts absurd. Insurance companies
usually have stringent policy clauses that keep them from having to pay out if
a client takes the controls of a podracer.

By tradition, podracers are homebrew, with thrusters scavenged from
airspeeder transports. This doesn’t prevent major vehicle manufacturers
from cranking out production models, often with modifications that make them
less of a racer and more of a status symbol, such as two-seater cockpits
that serve as a serious drag in a race but are superb for picking up
race enthusiasts for a date.

Controlling a podracer requires Drive complemented by Pilot.

While a podracer in flight configuration is 15–20m from nose to tail,
the actual vehicle is no larger than an interceptor; the size is
Compact (2).

Unlike most vehicles, podracers have separate Maneuver and Acceleration
skills. They suffer from overheating; each round, subtract Systems from the
amount of Acceleration used (1 is sufficient to maintain speed), and roll. If
the result is positive, apply that level of stress to the vehicle’s Systems
track; if the result is negative, clear any stress box of that level or lower.
If the driver uses an aspect like Redline
to accelerate, it will be compelled on this check.

Wheeled Vehicles

Wheeled vehicles take the worst terrain modifiers, but can deliver
excellent speed and carrying capacity.

Walkers

Walkers are slow but extremely steady. They take minimal terrain
modifiers (as they can usually just step over obstacles that would
stymie a wheeled vehicle or slow a tracked one) and minimal weather
modifiers (as they can simply adjust their stance to deal with all
but the most turbulent conditions).

Air

Jetpacks and repulsor packs are
available, but they are seldom integrated into anything less than heavy armor.
Flying suits are cumbersome, but can be useful for certain types of assaults.
They aren’t superbly maneuverable, a flying person is a very obvious
target, and the energy cost is fairly high, so flight is generally used only
for dealing with building walls and steep hills.

Airspeeders are unable to hover in the air, and follow the roles of old-style
fixed-wing aircraft. Airspeeders have stronger engines than landspeeders, in
order to reach the velocity where they can reconfigure their repulsorlift
cushion to make the entire vehicle into a lifting body, and
stabilizers that work without proximity to the ground.

Antigravity vehicles capable of hovering at any altitude, with small
geometry buffers that store
potential energy for rapid ascents. With enough energy, they could
theoretically exit the atmosphere, but they rarely have life support or drives
that would work in vacuum to allow them to reach orbital velocity;
practically, they are limited to a planet’s troposphere.
Swoops vary from sport vehicles to
search and
rescue to military. Military swoops are used for
assault
support roles.

Marketing departments happily conflate terms like speeder and
swoop, leading to much confusion over what people call their
vehicles.

Swoopbikes

Small (size 1) vehicles holding one to two people, holding much the
same role as motorcycles.

BARC speeder:
¤8,300. It’s listed as a speeder but can go to high altitude.
tCWCG p165

Patrol Swoopbike

Racing Swoopbike

Fast and maneuverable, with very little cargo. Some are armed, though,
for the more dangerous racing circuits.
Maneuver 4, Systems 3, Sensors 2, Structure 1, Cargo 0 (10kg, no passengers).

Kreehawk-48

A racing swoopbike from Feral Flight.

Swoops

Compact (size 2) vehicles holding from two to eight people, holding much
the same role as cars.

Swoopcoupe

A sporty, two-seater vehicle with very little cargo capacity. They
usually have no physical canopy, relying on a force field when the occupants
want to keep out wind and weather. Maneuver 3, Systems 2, Structure 2,
Sensors 1, Cargo 0 (100kg, 1 passenger).

Nexu-16

A sporty and maneuverable two-seater from Feral Flight. The
force field bubble roof can vary from windscreen to complete enclosure.

Swoopracer

A high-performance swoopcoupe, similar to a modern
stock car.
All swoopracers are flying advertisements for their manufacturers.
Maneuver 4, Systems 3, Structure 2, Sensors 1, Cargo 0 (100kg, 1 passenger).

Artillery

Sea

Watercraft can make use of supercavitation for speed. Water-surface travel usually takes place with seaspeeders, but sailing is sometimes used for pleasure craft; such vessels can get quite fast, similar to the modern Hydroptère.

Subterranean

Burrowing and drilling droids exist for laying cables and pipes, but the
really awesome machines are the fusion-powered subterrenes that can melt
their way through solid rock. They need to be hooked up to a massive cooling
system as they dig so they don’t melt. These are used to retrofit
subway systems into existing cities, though on extremely old ecumenopolis
worlds like Coruscant, the subways were likely blasted through the lower
levels rather than the bedrock.

Space

A ship with a solid superstructure can last for centuries or millennia, with
occasional upgrades and refits; the equilibrium technology level of blasters,
repulsorlifts, antigravity, ion drives, and hyperdrive has been around for a
long time. Some freighters have hosted generations of the same family, and
your grandmother’s tricked-out landspeeder, if well-maintained, may still have
tricks to show people strutting their new purchase.

Some species are very utilitarian in their designs; others will go to great
inconvenience to fit their particular worldview. It’s common to see starships
at dock, painted with features like eyes, mouths, clan tattoos, and coat
patterns.

Some people install
droid
brains in starships to manage complex systems, but they never achieve
proper consciousness because they lack proper
embodiment; a starship just doesn’t
offer sufficiently versatile interaction with the rest of the world.
The closest you find to a self-willed, self-piloting starship is one with
a high-quality droid that integrates with the ship’s systems.

There are a lot of great ideas for personalities for self-willed
starships in Starblazer Adventures, but
it’s just not in genre for Star Wars.

No sane person flies in a starship that doesn’t have a minimally
operating deflector screen that can deal with the inevitable accumulation
of orbital debris.

Between high-quality emergency crash fields, antigravity lifters, and
internal grav plates shanghaied into emergency mode, it is possible for
a skilled pilot to bring a failing spacecraft down from orbit to a
survivable crash. The final impact diverts all the energy to protect
the passengers (who should be gathered together into as small a volume
as possible) and usually leaves the rest of the ship beyond repair.

Starships usually adjust their internal gravity and atmospheric,
pressure, gas mix, and humidity to match the properties of the
destination planet in order to minimize adaptation for passengers.
(Some make a point of maximizing the comfort on the voyage instead,
presuming their passengers can afford the hovercabs and hotels
that offer similar amenities.) Others have the environment cranked
up to keep the environment challenging; if your crew regularly works
out in 1.5g, they’ll find most planets easy to handle.

All starships have tanks of water, liquid hydrogen, and liquid
oxygen. The fusion plant can easily electrolyze the water to top up
the other two tanks, the hydrogen runs the fusion plant, and when the
fusion plant is shut down, the hydrogen and oxygen run the ship’s
fuel cells. The water tanks are often divided into distilled (by the
spare heat from the fusion plant) and impure (which can be loaded up
on any ice asteroid or habitable planet). The impure tank is usually
brought up to temperatures inimical to life at some point on a voyage,
to prevent introducing new life forms to other planets, but some people
just aren’t good galactic citizens, and those tanks do need
washing out...

Interstellar travel is much slower than in
the Imperial
Era; it requires performing astrogation calculations and
cross-referencing against the latest charts. The galaxy only contains
the beginnings of
the hyperspace
beacon system that has thoroughly mapped the hyperlanes by the
time of the Old
Sith Wars (to be later superseded
by navicomputers).
A pilot can expect hyperspace beacons to make their lives easier on
major trade routes, though experienced ones will always check against
their old records, just in case someone has hijacked the beacon.

Spatch-Cote is a
brand of hull sealant that most starships have in their emergency kit;
durafill is the
spaceworthy version of Bondo.

Crew

Standard starship crew positions:

Captain: coordinates the crew; primary skill
Leadership. In combat, they usually
exercise the Command trapping, with their Leadership complementing
the skills of the people taking the orders.

Pilot: controls the movement of the vehicle; primary skill
Pilot, restricted by the Maneuver of the
vehicle, for movement and dodging. If they have the Steered Guns proficiency
of Guns, they can use Pilot to attack with fixed guns.

Astrogator: performs navigation; primary
skill Technician. They have no
combat role unless there is a need to escape into hyperspace.

Gunner: one per weapon system; primary
skill Guns (Steered Guns proficiency).
Multiple weapons systems can be slaved to a single fire control when targeting
one opponent; if so, simply apply the same roll to each system.

Point defense: one per point defense system; primary
skill Guns (Steered Guns proficiency).
Operators usually operate with held actions.

System Operator: on a small ship, the system operator handles
sensors and communications, ECM, and shields. On a larger vessel, there is
an individual operator for each system. Primary skill Technician.

Sensor Operator: rolls the ship’s Sensors
(complemented by their own Technician) to place aspects like
Firing Solution on opposing ships. Sensors
also covers communications— anything that a computer can’t handle usually
involves setting up a lock for a comm laser.

Engineer: keeps the ship running in battle; primary skill
Technician. There can only be one chief engineer, though they can delegate
to crew and droids (who may work as attached minions on a large ship).
In combat, they are typically clearing boxes of shield stress or placing
aspects like Power to the Forward Shields on
the ship.

Nonmilitary Vessels

Some nonmilitary vessels are more than a match for many
military vessels of their same tonnage and capabilities.

The smallest possible hyperdrive ship, about twice times the size of a
starfighter and half the size of a light freighter. A fast hyperdrive, good
ion engines, a fusion plant to run it, enough shields and weapons to break
away from an engagement, and life support for up to four people (no bunks— the
crew sleep in reclining acceleration seats and have a very compact fresher),
sometimes with hibersleep for several more, and storage comparable to a small
walk-in closet.

A hyper-capable ship with small cargo capacity and life support for about half
a dozen people, about ⅔ the size of a
light freighter. They usually stand out in a spaceport because they’re
supported by very portable stores of value— information, or people being
carried around. Like a courier, they’re designed for running rather than
fighting.

Usually the size of a light freighter; used for bulk transport of personnel
and goods; these are used when it’s time to move large amounts of crew down
for shore leave and resupply a ship. Sometimes also called
a launch, or (in a
military vessel) a cutter. They can usually carry 50
people or 20 tons of cargo without sacrificing maneuverability. Shuttles
often have sufficiently rugged repulsors that they can carry up to three times
as much cargo mass, though the maneuverability drops to that of a stunned
bantha.

I’m basing the ratio of people and cargo tonnage on the DC-3. In this era, shuttles
shouldn’t have hyperdrives; in the era of the films, everything bigger than
the family minivan has one.

Freighters

A hyper-capable ship designed for profitable interstellar trade, usually about
35m long. They often have slots for up to four cargo
modules. They can pack a decent punch in a fight, especially if they’ve
loaded weapons pods in place of more profitable cargo modules. They usually
attract little notice in spaceports. Such ships are Large (4), and with Good
(3) cargo can carry several dozen tons of cargo; with Great (4) cargo, even
150 tons. If your planet isn’t at least on a tertiary trade route, it’s rare
to get visits from anything bigger than this.

A classic Corellian design from
Talon Shipyards.
It doesn’t carry as much cargo as some light freighters, but it’s more
likely to get the cargo to its destination despite opposition. It has
brackets for one standard cargo module.

Designed to carry hundreds or thousands of cargo modules, or a million tons of
cargo. They usually have very poor maneuverability, and the larger ones
aren’t even designed to land on a planet— they just move into low orbit and
call for cargo shuttles from the planet below. They are usually deployed with
corvette or frigate escorts capable of fighting off pirates, and only have a
few turrets for offense; their force fields are usually quite good, and many
are designed to be able to shunt all their power to internal force fields to
compartmentalize damage during battles. They are seldom seen outside the
galaxy’s major trade routes.

Some bulk freighters keep a batch of weapons pods tucked in the back of
the hold; if ordinary escorts are not available, they hire light freighters
to load up the weapons pods in their container grips and serve as escorts.

Yachts vary from interstellar pleasure craft to hyperdrive-capable homes.
Many entrepreneurs have yachts that serve as a home office: fly it to a planet
with good markets, rent some land to park it, deploy the collapsible pavilions
for extra living space, and you’re all set. If it looks like trouble is
heating up in that sector, pack up and get out while the getting is good.
(Yachts designed for this purpose have integral dust covers and other gear for
keeping flight readiness while parked for years at a time, including droid
programs for regular maintenance without firing up the ion engines and
annoying the neighbors.)

The spacegoing equivalent of a houseboat (if houseboats were seaworthy); it
can even function as a houseboat on water worlds where it’s easier to rent
dock space than it is to rent a landing bay. (Typically the ship comes to a
stop at a high-and-dry altitude, hovers on antigrav long enough to cool the
engines, closes watertight armor panels over them, then descends on antigravs
and maneuvering thrusters.) Ships like this usually house a family or two,
traveling to worlds where the markets need their expertise, and leaving when
opportunities beckon elsewhere or local trends point at dangerous unrest;
standard equipment includes two workspaces. Such ships are generally unarmed,
and only travel in convoy with armed vessels. In flight, a Nomad is
quite comfortable, and when it deploys its collapsible pavilions for extra
living and office space, it is spacious. The 60-ton cargo hold may hold
anything from several generations of attic furniture to feedstock for
fabber workspaces. Only minor retooling is required to convert the
workspaces to kitchens and the expansion quarters into restaurant seating,
and some celebrity chefs go on galactic tours in such vessels.

A luxury yacht with a dozen staterooms and barracks for a dozen
servants, a 20-ton cargo area, a garage for a swoop,
and a workshop for the owner’s hobby.
It is designed to go places fast,
running from any fights; the weapons are there to hold off the rabble
until the yacht can get away. For a racing yacht, swap out the Takes
a Beating and Failover Backups stunts for Surge and Pirouette. For an
all-droid-crew yacht, swap out the barracks for a droid maintenance
bay.

A passenger ship at least 100 meters long, usually
carrying over 500 passengers. A luxury liner
will usually carry less than half as many passengers as a comparable
passenger liner, but have a great deal more space. They are usually
designed for running rather than fighting, though demand from the
wealthy and paranoid has led to some luxury ships that qualify as
frigates.

The most extravagant luxury vessels are called worldliners; they’re
spherical vessels whose surface is covered in soil and plants, with a particle
screen holding in the atmosphere around it. They have their own luxury
shuttles for ferrying passengers to and from planetary surfaces. Most spots
on a worldliner are at most 100 meters from a concealed entrance to the more
secure decks below. They have oversize power plants to power the modified
grav plates (which are operating more like tractor beams, since there are no
ceiling plates). A similar design, slightly less extravagant, is
an oasis: a circular ship (drive on the bottom) whose top deck is
covered by a large garden.

An overengineered ship with a heavy frame, big engines, and either tractor
beams or grappling droids hooked up to massive cables. These can retrieve
vessels no longer capable of moving under their own power, or those not
allowed to do so, such as if the pilot’s insurance has lapsed. (Usually, if
your pilot’s insurance has lapsed, it’s cheaper to pay for an inspector to
come visit from a nearby space station or the surface. Tugs
are expensive, and hyper-capable tugs extremely so.)

Large amounts of space junk accumulate in orbit around industrialized worlds.
No one sane flies in a ship without functioning shields to stop the occasional
loose rivet from causing serious impact damage. At a certain point, it
becomes worthwhile to sweep the debris out of the sky by deploying huge webs
of force fields to clear the more popular orbits. Vacsweepers are also used
for forensic purposes when a ship has been destroyed and its pursuer wants the
maximum data available from its remains.

Mining Vessels

Big spherical vessels that have simulated environments inside; one ship can
have numerous layers for different spots on a planet, and the largest ships
can simulate multiple worlds. They’re used as reservoirs of viable species;
they’re usually stocked by pulling up entire cores from the soil and allowing
the lifeforms from there to spread into a prepared sterile growth medium (with
the same balance of raw materials as humus-rich soil), then stocking with
the larger flora and fauna. In the smaller, humanoid-scale decks, they
have huge reservoirs of sampled genes and gametes from the larger creatures,
where they would not be able to maintain a breeding population. These
are used as research vessels for biotechnology corporations.

Military Vessels

Sith keep a lot of warships. The era of the
films is one in which military technology has been undergoing rapid change;
before the Clone Wars, capital ships were only needed to prevent spacelane
piracy. Under the Sith, there has been considerably more demand, and the
technology has been mature for a very long time. Some capital ships have been
in service for over a thousand years, and most are heavily ornamented to show
their owner’s wealth.

Small Craft

Most capital ships are designed to be able to land on a planetary
surface, but they don’t usually do so unless they’re establishing a garrison.
They carry a variety of small craft to deal with anything from exterior
repairs to personnel transport to resupply. Most small craft don’t carry
hyperdrives of their own, but do have repulsors and geometry buffers
sufficient to land on a planetary surface.

The gig is a small vehicle with room for half a dozen people, generally with
oversized engines, power plant, and shields to provide for the safety of the
captain; some are even hyper-capable, built on a
scout template. In Sith and Sith-inspired militaries,
most captains kit theirs out with plush nerf-leather upholstery, a thick rug,
and a small robobar for entertaining visitors.

A vehicle used for exterior inspections and repairs. They can carry up to
half a dozen people, and only need a single pilot for crew. They only have
the repulsors and engines of an airspeeder; they can land from orbit, but lack
the power to get back again. Many of them have exterior arms mounted, which
can be controlled by waldos or droids to assist in exterior construction work.

A workhorse vehicle used for transporting people and goods; it can carry up to
a dozen people or couple of tons of cargo. They usually have one pilot and an
astromech droid aboard. These are the smallest craft equipped for extended
missions, possessing fold-down bunks for four and a mealpak heater. They are
also the smallest vehicle to carry a set of long-range sensors, and are often
sent on in-system scouting missions or courier work between ships in a fleet.

Essentially a double-sized pinnace, with much
the same functions; it’s the military version of
the shuttle. Can carry up to two dozen people
or several tons of cargo. In Sith and Sith-like militaries, a capital
ship’s officers will generally appropriate one for their own use and
kit it out comfortably, so they don’t have to ride in the same shuttle
with the enlisted men.

A Sith creation
from Imperial
Dominance Designs. The main cargo area can hold 100 tons and is full of
clip points for attaching webbing for securing up to 80 troops, and the
weapons/storage locker can hold 20 tons. It is designed to deliver its
payload intact and provide covering fire while the troops or cargo unloads.
There are multiple ramps on the underside for rapid deployment, and the
ramming prow has an assault airlock for invading starships. The dorsal and
ventral turrets carry antivehicle armament, while the side turrets carry
antipersonnel blasters. While it is primarily made to insert and evacuate
troops, it can also serve in holding territory, with barracks for the shuttle
crew, a kitchen for feeding the troops, and a workshop for repairing their
gear.

Attack Craft

No one has yet developed a hyperdrive small enough to integrate with a
starfighter, so most fighters are designed to operate from a carrier vessel of
some sort. Some planetary-defense interceptors (for colony worlds) are
designed to stay under a tarp in a barn for years with monthly maintenance,
flying into low orbit to defend the colony.

Sith starfighters are all named after hand-to-hand combat weapons. The Sith
combat philosophy is to have lots of cheap starfighters and lots of pilots,
and the ones who have the talent to excel in the cheap starfighters are
worthy; the ones who don’t— if they live— are reassigned to other small craft.
They tend to have excellent squadron discipline as a matter of survival.

Most fighters in d20 are Gargantuan, which makes them Medium (3).
Interceptors in d20 are usually Huge, which makes them Compact (2).

Fast, maneuverable fighters– Compact (2), a size smaller than other
fighters— designed to intercept bombers and reconnaissance craft.
Interceptor can be tagged against fighter-bombers,
bombers, and blastboats, for maneuverability and disengaging from a fight;
it can be compelled when it goes up against shipping and capital ships.

Steffan suggests:
Interceptor - A Wing - +2 vs Fighter/bombers, +1 vs Heavy. Can
disengage easily. Very Weak against CapShips. largely useless
against light shipping.
This craft should be fast enough to get to an incoming bomber squadron
& break it up before it gets into missile range of a task group. They
are too lightly armed to pose a threat to shipping, although
exceptional pilots may gamble on agility protecting them from AA fire
long enough to pick off point defense turrets. Trying to score kills
on bombers in the face of escorts is also a daredevil move.
A-Wings would have move-fast & counter-missile stunts.

A-Wing,
with two
blaster cannons and two concussion missile launchers with six missiles
each, and it’s smaller than the X-Wing, so concussion missiles must be
smaller. Jammers are canon for the A-Wing, so we should look at ECM/ECCM.
It’s ¤175,000— basic starfighter is ¤100,000.

A Sith creation from Imperial Dominance Designs.
One of the smallest fighters: a central spine with a turbolaser on one end,
an ion drive on the rear, a fusion plant in the middle, a one-person cockpit
on one side, and a concussion missile launcher on the other. Very
maneuverable. This is an
Interceptor, designed to attack bombers and
larger fighters; you can tag the aspect to attack heavy assault fighters,
fighter/bombers, and bombers.

Fighters designed to take on other fighters. Hotshot pilots like these
and interceptors, where they get to show off their reflexes. They
pack a punch with blasters, and often have a few missiles to throw as
well.

Steffan suggests:
Space-Superiority Fighter (XWing)- +2 vs Heavy, +1 vs F/B, weak
against C.S. Can attack light freighters & escorts
This craft is optimized for anti-fighter operations. They may be
called upon to escort a strike through enemy Combat Space Patrol, or
conduct pinpoint strikes to eliminate point defense guns on starships.
X-wings would have Fire-linked stunts.

X-Wing,
which can fire all four
guns at once for power or alternating for firing speed. Proton torpedoes are
1 kiloton fusion warheads. Two launchers, three torpedoes each.
¤150,000.
SECR p178ICS p18

Starfighters with a modest bomb payload; they can’t deliver the amount of
hurt that a full bomber can, but they can get in places that bombers can’t.
Bombers attract the pilots with more leadership skills, who will attempt
to manage the overall battle.

Steffan suggests:
Fighter/Bomber (Ywing)- Very weak against I, weak against SSF, +1 vs
CS, +2 vs light freighters/escorts. This craft is manueverable enough
to not be easy prey to true fighters, and heavily armed enough to pose
a threat to shipping.
Y-wings get ion gun &
tailgunner. (maybe also "old reliable").
Tailgunner is probably why Y's get called a Fighter/Bomber. In the
anti-shipping role, having a turreted gun allows you to circle the
convoy, instead of dashing into it, which cuts down the effectiveness
of the escorting light ships.

Hyena-class_bomber:
Light laser cannons, 6 proton torpedoes, 6 concussion missiles.
¤23,000. Supposedly Compact (2) [Huge], making it the size of an interceptor,
perhaps due to the lack of life support systems.
tCWCG p208

A Sith creation from Imperial Dominance Designs.
This is a Fighter-Bomber, optimal for
going after shipping and fairly capable against capital ships.
Blaster cannon, ion cannon, and proton torpedoes in its load-out.

Assault Starfighters

An Assault Starfighter is designed to bring
firepower to capital ships. Invoke against capital ships, compel
when attacked by space superiority fighters and interceptors (though
the armor should protect against the interceptors).

Steffan suggests:
Heavy (Bwing)- VW against SSF, W vs I (heavier armor means that
Interceptors can pound on them all day, but they just don't care) +2
vs CS. Probably monsters against shipping, if they can be spared from
Cap-ship assaults This role is optimized for killing large vessels.
The primary weapon is usually long-ranged missiles or torpedoes. They
rely on fighter escorts and durability to reach missile range.
Bwing
would have fire-linked, ion gun & lotsa ammo.

A Sith creation
from Imperial
Dominance Designs. A heavier cousin to the Halberd, but with three spars
on the front and cockpits in the niches between the spars. The pilot sits on
the right and controls the big central cannon, while the gunner controls the
mobile ones atop the side spars and the torpedo launchers inside them. This
is a Heavy Assault Starfighter, designed to get
into missile range of a capital ship and start laying down missile fire; it’s
a smaller cousin to a blastboat, but it needs an
escort to protect it against space superiority fighters. (Its armor can shrug
off the attacks of interceptors fairly easily.)

The blastboat has a similar size and role to a bomber, but with more emphasis
on energy weapons. They generally have an excessively large fusion reactor
(or three linked ones) feeding the engines, the shields, and a set of big
fixed-mount blaster cannon; they also carry a good load of torpedoes.
Blastboat doctrine usually involves a squadron of fighters accompanying
the blastboat to get inside a capital ship’s shields and give it a good
pounding.

Corvettes are used as assault craft, and are usually horizontally oriented and
around 100m long.
They are usually commanded by a Lieutenant Commander. System defense
corvettes may sacrifice a hyperdrive for greater firepower. They usually
have no flight bay, preferring to land or dock to deliver assault troops.

Tartan-class patrol cruiser:
it’s called a cruiser and listed as a Colossal (frigate) capital ship, but
it only has 70 crew, 50 troops, 1000 tons cargo, and no small craft;
5 gunner on point defense laser cannon. I think that’s just a corvette.
¤4,200,000.
tFUCG p209

Moganidana

Sith capital ships are based around the idea of a fortress with a drive
underneath it and the heaviest weapons able to point forward; orientation
doesn’t matter much in space, and once the battle is over, they need to land
on planets and start imposing rule. The drive-underneath orientation is also
handy for using it as a weapon against ground installations: they crank up the
reaction drive and turn whatever is in the way into molten slag. The emphasis
is on conquest, so they emphasize aggressive capability over safety to the
ship and its occupants. Their ships emphasize weaponry and maneuverability.

The galactic banks also maintain their own militaries, since they need to
present a credible threat should someone seek to default on a loan and fail to
yield the collateral. Banking militaries are uninterested in conquest; their
purpose is to extract value and to punish defaulting debtors. They are more
cautious about protecting their investments than the Sith, and emphasize
superstructure, armor, and shields. Their designs tend to be horizontally
oriented and blocky, preferring multiple large turbolaser turrets to the Sith
propensity for massive spinal mounts.

Sith capital ships have quarters next to the bridge set aside for a Sith Lord,
and a private lift with access to a hangar bay.

Frigates are the smallest and most maneuverable capital ships, usually about
200m long, often used as escorts for cargo ships or screening elements for
larger ships. These are usually run by a Commander. They usually have a
small flight bay, carrying an assault shuttle or two for delivering troops to
a fight while the frigate remains mobile to keep space superiority.

A single tower of varying size, with drives on one end, a bridge on the other,
a spinal mount weapon running down the center, several rings of turrets, and a
couple of small craft bays. These are usually only seen on Sith military
agendas.

The Imperial-class is 1600m.
ICS p6
For comparison, aircraft carrier can
be 350m long, with a ship’s company of 3000 [2700 sailors, 150 chiefs,
150 officers], an air wing of 1800 [250 pilots, 1550 support personnel], and
up to 90 aircraft.

Not as fast, but packing tremendous firepower. These are usually commanded by
a Line Captain, and have a flag bridge suitable for a Fleet Admiral.

Quality: Great (4)

Scale: Colossal (9)

Aspects:
Dreadnought

Interstellar Shipping

Interstellar freight is economically viable. Light freighters have
to deal in fairly valuable goods; only the huge container ships can
make it viable to carry bulk goods like flour, and even agricultural
worlds have mills that handle the first stage of refining their
products. See also Star Wars
Ships and Vehicles. The big carriers are the size of
dreadnoughts.

The galaxy has a standard cargo module, comparable to
modern cargo containers; the
galactic standard
intermodal
container is 7.2m×3.6m×3.6m on the outside, which abstracts to
Medium (3) size. The typical pressure-tight container is made of
plasteel, masses about 2 tons empty, and about 24 tons when full. The
largest freighters can carry thousands; light freighters usually carry
from one to four within mandibles that keep the modules within the
ship’s inertial compensators. Some modules are also used as
prefabricated housing for space stations and outposts. Cargo modules
make it easy to load and unload a ship; half a dozen longshoremen operating
a crane can move two dozen modules an hour.

Smaller break bulk cargo is combined into other
unit loads
such as
crates,
bulk boxes,
carboys,
drums,
casks,
tuns,
and pallets.
These can take a while to load and unload; some ships carry their own
stevedore droids to handle it, but most rely on local labor. (On an
industrialized world, expect to hire a bunch of organics from the local
labor guild that has staked out the spaceport as its turf; on a heavily
industrialized one, expect to hire a few organic supervisors with a bunch
of binary load lifters.)

Compare to a post-Panamax container ship:
1200’×600’, able to carry 12000 containers.
The Millennium
Falcon’s mandibles are there to grip a single cargo module; while I
came up with that independently, Pete
Briggs thought of it first. The Falcon is
26.5m×20m×5m according to West End Games, the rare
Selyana plans give it as 36.9m×26.2m×8.85m, and a
detailed calculation gives a 27m saucer diameter, 34.8m length, and 6.9m
thickness; I’m using the latter one to judge the width of a cargo module.
Triple-E ships are 400m long, 59m wide, 73m high, 18000 containers.

Basic: just a shell that holds goods; not even atmosphere-tight.
The packing crates are responsible for maintaining the environment of
the goods.

Tanker: designed to hold a concentrated chemical. (It’s
seldom efficient to ship large amounts of water around.)

Pressurized: it can hold an atmosphere and is insulated
against the cold of space by 10cm of insulation, giving an inner space
of 7m×3.4m×3.4m. The heating elements can maintain a
minimum temperature of up to 30°C, but it cannot cool anything
below ambient. Plugs into a power jack on the transport. No grav
plates; strap your goods down before takeoff.

Refrigerated: a pressurized container that maintains a particular
temperature range, often with a power cell backup. Plugs into a power
jack on the transport. No grav plates. The extra refrigeration
equipment reduces the space to 6.8m×3.2m×3.2m.

Habitation: pressurized containers, designed to support life, with
grav plates to provide internal gravity. Varies from a simple set of bunks
(three rows with stacks of three on either side holds 18 people), to a couple
of staterooms comparable to those on a cruise ship, to comfortable living
quarters (a little less than 26m2 [279ft2 for a more
familiar comparison for players familiar with the sizes of houses and
apartments]; for comparison, a single-wide like the Glassic Soho is
at least 37m2 and a micro compact home is 6¾ m2) with a king-sized bed, entertainment center, and
fresher; some are designed to support specialized environments for beings that
don’t breathe standard atmospheres. Plugs into power and life support
jacks and pressure doors. Some are not habitable during transit, but can
expand into larger spaces on delivery to an outpost (like the Illy Push Button House) or space station.
Habitation modules are insulated from the temperatures of space, but rely on
the deflector screens of a starship or space stations to avoid problems with
radiation or debris.

Kitchen: a luxury, usually attached to a ship that is
carrying a VIP, or hooked into a space station or work site. The
module is a facility with all the amenities for turning raw
ingredients into food. Half of the module space is given over to food
storage, with refrigerator, freezer, and pantry sections. The kitchen
itself has ovens, sinks, mixers, and usually a droid mounted on
overhead tracks with programs for anything from washing dishes to sous
chef work. (Most starships get by on ration packs.)

Medbay: eight recovery bunks (with full medical monitoring)
and a complete surgery, with ceiling tracks for a medical droid. Not
as good as a dedicated hospital ship, but many tramp freighter
captains can earn a good bit of money by attaching some of these to
their ships and evacuating casualties from war zones.

Hibersleep: a
habitation module that can pack more people in by placing them in induced
hibernation. (Stasis tubes do not yet
exist; coldsleep, which involves the careful vitrification of tissue to
actually freeze the body safely, is a known technology, dating back to the
pre-FTL colonization of the Core Worlds, but no one really needs to stay in
suspended animation for decades at a time. Almost no one.
Carbon freezing
is another long-haul technique.) Often
touted as an alternative to being cooped up in a starship for long
trips, but mostly used for shipping colonists, troops, and refugees.
It’s generally a good idea to have a paramedic or medical droid on
hand to deal with complications going into or out of hibernation. No
grav plates; passengers are strapped into coffinlike trays. Each tray
is 2m×0.8m×0.5m; they move on a series of rails, and are not meant to
be accessible without them. One module can hold 70 people.

Fabber: a complete high-tech fabrication workshop, including
matter printers; can come in very handy when visiting worlds with a
poor tech base. Needs high-tech supplies to run it, though; some
tinkers make a good living just traveling between colony worlds with
half the hold full of fabber supplies and other parts.

Weapons pod: sports turrets and missile launchers, and batteries
that charge slowly off a ship’s mains and hold enough energy for
a good battle. Useful for bolting extra hardware onto a ship that
needs to deal with threats; popular with ships going into pirate-infested
spacelanes.

Fighter dock: docking facilities for a single starfighter.
This is not a substitute for a proper flight bay, but (if installed in a
surface clamp) it allows a freighter to carry an attached fighter to repel
pirates. It has access tube for the pilot and astromech droid, fuel tanks,
and other support infrastructure,
but repairs to the fighter qualify
as in flight rather than spacedock the way they would in a
flight bay.

Reactor: a fusion reactor, suitable to integrate into a new
base. A light freighter whose container grips are loaded with a fuel
tank, a reactor, and a weapons pod can be a formidable surprise.

Launch bay: a carrier for droid-controlled drones. A load
for planetary survey tends to have about a dozen orbital instrument
packages and several repulsorlift-equipped sampling drones with
chemical assay packages and mass spectrometers for analyzing
substances in the field. A more military load tends to be three neutrino detectors, which
can triangulate on active fusion reactors...

Recycler: water cleaning, algae/krill vats

The salamander ranodon sibiricus has a huge liver that stores lots of
glycogen and converts it to glycerine to survive freezing.
The North American wood frog, Rana sylvatica, can also survive –8°C using
glucose.

Starship Features

It is a truth galactically acknowledged that a starship with a working
fusion reactor is never in want of heat. All military and scout ships and
most light freighters are equipped with facilities for steam distillation and
electrolysis that will allow them to refuel anywhere they can find water—
liquid on a planetary surface, or solid among asteroids out past the ice line.
Given the heat of an operating fusion reactor, is it
practical to just convert the water to plasma and separate the elements
that way?

All starships that carry living beings have, at minimum, a basic fresher and
recycler. A fresher is a 1m×1m floor-to-ceiling column that fits most
humanoid beings. For waste disposal, just step in and fold out a seat; for
cleansing, place clothing in the cleaner drawer, shower off dirt, blow dry,
and re-don clothing that has all the while been put through solvents, sonics,
and forced air to be clean and dry. Heat comes from heater elements that run
off the ship’s fuel cells in dock or from a coolant line from the
fusion plant while underway.

The basic, no-frills recycler scrubs CO2 to yield O2,
pulls other contaminants out of the air, and separates water from shipboard
waste. It fills a tank full of very smelly organic sludge, which will
hopefully not be filled to bursting when the ship next makes port. It’s
roughly a 1 meter cube.

Many light freighters and almost all scoutships have a basic biocycler:
a 1m×2m×2m system that contains numerous snaking transparent
tubes intertwined with quantum-dot lighting and a set of cultures of
tailored bacteria and algae. This uses biological principles to do the same
thing as the no-frills recycler, with the added bonus that it cranks out
a steady stream of algae flour. One of these can handle waste from a
dozen normal-sized humanoids, and can stretch a ship’s ration
supply considerably on long-duration missions. In long-term shutdown,
a basic biocycler can keep its cultures encysted for decades using
minimal power.

An advanced biocycler is 3m×2m×2m and features tailored
invertebrates like krill and worms. These can handle waste from a few dozen
people, and cranks out protein paste as well as algae flour. (Protein paste
on unleavened algae-flour crackers is every spacer’s nightmare food, and
this tasteless treat is available in every spaceport as real spacer
food for parents to give to clamoring children who dream of traveling the
stars. Real spacers keep a well-stocked spice cabinet and some form of
culture for growing bread such as yeast or sourdough starter.) Large
ships usually carry enough advanced biocyclers to handle their expected
population. In long-term shutdown, the protein cultures die, but new
generations can be easily hatched out of eggs; a supply of eggs is
usually kept in a thickly lead-lined container that can handle even
severe radiation conditions— a dead biocycler smells really,
really bad.

A luxury biocycler just fits into a container cargo module and cranks out a
nutrient broth that is used to feed cell cultures that are then used with
tissue printers to generate artificial meat, or to cultures that secrete
substances like cooking oils and raw milk. These are usually only found on
capital ships; a luxury civilian ship just stocks its larder, but high-ranking
officers on long journeys become rather irate when served protein paste on
unleavened algae-flour crackers. Luxury biocyclers are not designed for
long-term shutdown, and someone exploring the long-dead hulk of a capital
ship would be wise to be careful about restoring atmosphere to the
cyclers; the smell can be horrifying if there are any volatiles left.

Hydroponics modules plug into a ship’s biocyclers and crank out
fresh food (or sometimes just kaf beans) for the ship’s table.
They usually contain genetailored vines snaking around an internal
growth trellis spangled with quantum dot lights and nutrient tubes.
It can only be tended by small spider droids that can navigate its
innards, but it can grow fruit or beans in every liter of volume.
Look up times for fruit maturation. The
leaves of the vines may also be tailored to provide fresh greens
for the table, or to concentrate the compounds of spices over time.

Light freighters often keep enough spare parts tucked away in a hold
to effect repairs on a journey; some even have a fabber integrated
into the cargo hold, and crank out bespoke objects or molds (for
casting with simpler materials) when visiting colony worlds that lack
such capacity. Capital ships always have sufficient fabber capacity
to handle their own maintenance on long-duration missions. Most
capital ships just carry an appropriate load for their expected
mission, but some just have huge amounts of factory capacity and are
able to crank out tanks or fighters as necessary, given the time to
set up the production line.